The beginning of September is always a festive time around Robert Frost’s Banjo central—not only does my birthday fall then, but also our wedding anniversary. Since the actual date of both (the second) fell on a busy day in the middle of the week, Eberle & I decided to celebrate on Friday with a canoe trip up the North Fork of the Payette River. The North Fork is a peaceful & lazy stretch of water that begins where the river flows into Payette Lake north of McCall. It's an added attraction that the North Fork is closed to all motorized boats, so it’s quiet & safe (of course, on a summer weekend it can be pretty crowded with canoes & kayaks!) Fortunately, we got there mid morning, before the holiday weekend rush, & at many points had the river mostly to ourselves.
Besides the beautiful scenery, there’s a lot of wildlife. While this section of the North Fork isn’t all that far from civilization, it’s not all that far from some serious back country either. Because of this, one animal that can be seen on this river is moose—an animal I’d never seen in the wild.
Eberle & I were rowing along, enjoying the beautiful sunshine & the peaceful river when we came around the bend & saw what looked to be two large stumps with ears. In fact it was a cow moose & a young moose basking themselves in the sun on the beach of a promontory. We stopped paddling & started furiously taking pictures. The moose were quite placid; they finally got up & went into a grove to eat; when they disappeared into the trees we paddled around the point & found them on the other side—further away this time, but still in plain sight. They never seemed agitated by our attention—in fact on the other side of the point the cow moose was lying down quite peacefully, tho occasionally sniffing the air. The young moose continued to forage.
What a day! Unfortunately, somebody (me) forgot to charge the camera’s battery, so after about 90 pix it went dead—which means we don’t have pictures of the mink we saw or of the three beautiful mergansers that forged past us upriver. But we did take all the photos we could of the moose—here are the best of them (click to enlarge). Enjoy!
Two stumps with ears
A picture can’t really convey how massive these animals are
In profile—the young moose is almost the size of a horse!
It was amazing when they stood up—the cow moose’s body was like a draught horse in size, but with longer legs.
The young moose foraging around the point—you'll have to enlarge this & the next photo to see the moose.
What a weekend we had from Friday evening until Sunday noon. In fact, it seemed like the equivalent of about two weekends. Our Portland friends, Sue & Jay, rolled into Indian Valley about 9:30 on Friday, & we spent a few hours of chatting, playing fiddle & guitar, & baking chocolate zucchini bread. Then it was off to McCall in the morning for a truly marathon day. For those of you who don’t know, McCall is about 50 miles northeast of Indian Valley, & is a mountain resort town. It was first established in the early part of the 20th century as a getaway from the summer heat in Boise. McCall is a a mile high, & lies next to the beautiful Payette Lake, so it makes an ideal summer vacation spot. While the valley temperatures are hovering very close to (or above) the century mark, the temperatures in McCall usually stay in the 80s (all of this Fahrenheit, needless to say).
We began our McCall outing with canoing on the Payette River on the north side of the lake. This is a non-motorized zone, & it was a really enjoyable outing; a fair number of other canoers & kayakers were out, but we had many intervals of peace & solitude on the river (which flows very gently in this area—south of McCall as the Payette River descends into the valley there’s some pretty serious whitewater). The river winds thru moose habitat, but we didn’t see one; we did follow a loon for a while, however—I’ve seen them from afar & certainly heard them both in Idaho & in Vermont, but had never seen one so close—this included watching the loon dive & catch a trout. Of course, the one chance I had for a close-up shot happened when the camera wasn’t ready at all!
After this, we headed to Lake Fork (south of McCall) for a wonderful lawn picnic with our good friend Judy Anderson, & refreshed on salad, chicken & mint water, we drove back to McCall to help Eberle & Sister Beverly set up for one of the Marymount Hermitage sales at the McCall Catholic Church. By the end of this, yours truly was about ready to cash in his chips, but I rallied, & we had a fun Chinese dinner at the Panda on the Lake, followed by a trip to the Alpine Playhouse for an excellent production of the Tracy Letts' play, Bug. The emotions elicited by this play can be rather grim (interpersed with moments of surreal & hysterical humor) but the acting & production were—as is usually the case with the Alpine—just first-rate.
Sunday morning saw us up & at ‘em early to head from Lake Fork, where we’d spent the night, back to Our Lady of the Lake catholic church to set up for the Sunday sale. During mass, Jay & Sue & I toured McCall; then back for the sale, during which I couldn’t keep myself from hauling out the resonator guitar & regaling the parishoners with edifying tunes like “Country Blues” or “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground.”
Sue & Jay left from Indian Valley, & I see they returned safely back to Portland, as I took some of these pix from Jay’s Facebook site. Meanwhile, yours truly had a great time, but feels a bit as if I was rode hard & put out wet. Will be trying to catch up on blog visits during the next couple of days during periods of more energy!
Top Pix: Loon on Payette River The Payette River, with kayakers The Maypole on Judy's lawn
Intrepid canoers
View up river
Canoing sirens
Eberle, Sue, Judy & Jay
Sister Mary Beverly outside the church with a small portion of her wares
Menus at the ready
Our all-time favorite theater, the Alpine Playhouse, about to go Bug-house
Sue & I kicking back on Sunday morning
Yours truly with guitar; yes, the case should have been open....
For you folks not from the West, the draw has nothing to do with lotteries or gun fights or poker—it’s (per Webster) “a gully smaller than a ravine,” & we have one of our own to explore. What Webster doesn't point out is that draws invariably mean water, which gives them a special standing in the Western landscape.
The draw, of course, is part of the meadow (or more strictly speaking, pasture), but the draw is its own world, enclosed & magical in a much different way than the wide open spaces around the pond, which we explored earlier here & here or the equally wide open spaces on top of the ridge, which we’ll explore later. The llamas, for instance, rarely venture into the draw because they don’t like the closed in space; however in the evening their grazing rounds typically take them to the rise just west & south of the draw where we can see them from our bedroom window.
In the past I used to mow a path to the draw in the spring & summer—I was a bit more ambitious perhaps, & the lawn mower just seemed to move along more easily then. At any rate, the path would have led back thru that wooden gate as far back toward the wooded area as it was practical to go in a line about two mower widths’ wide.
Weenie the cat & I went off exploring on Monday afternoon. It was a gorgeous day with mild temperatures & bright sun & only the gentlest of breezes (right now we’re in the midst of a 3-day blow that’s sending trash barrels & bird feeders flying…) Hope you enjoy walking with us thru these photos.
Top pic: The wooden gate, built by yours truly, on the north side of the fence around our lawn
The line of trees to the north & east indicate the flow of water from the springs feeding the draw. The rise to the left is the area the llamas come to graze in the evening.
A stand of cattails. Eberle & I do need to clear the draw out sometime this spring. Cattails are quite lovely & graceful in a way, but they are tenacious & they do spread rampantly.
The reddish stalk in the center of the picture is a blackberry shoot. There's quite a stand of blackberries in the draw, & we really look forward to berrying in the late summer - to someone like me who loves blackberry cobbler, the few scratches & scrapes are well worth it for the end result!
Weenie fords the little spring-fed creek thatruns thru the draw
We - I should say "I" - couldn't go as far up the draw as I expected because it's quite overgrown. Talk about a "thicket!" This is taken looking up the creek at ground level.
The view looking back from the draw - that's our old house straight ahead & the corner of our new house off to the left.
Weenie demonstrates that she could continue bushwacking beyond where yours truly can go - there are a lotta thorns on those branches.
An outing can nourish the spirit without involving travel to some distant & exotic locale; in fact, sometimes an outing simply involves walking out the front door & exploring the landscape around you. That’s what Eberle & I decided to do on Saturday.
As long-time readers know, we live on a dirt road that wends its way over the course of several miles past our house upward into the Payette National Forest. Almost directly opposite our house, another dirt road turns off at a 90-degree angle; this is Whiteman Lane, named after the ranching family that once owned 1,000 acres in this part of the valley—our 10-acre lot was really the only piece of land around her that wasn’t owned by the Whitemans.
Back around ‘00, the current Whiteman, a retired County magistrate, decided to sell his land & cash in on the boom that was beginning at the time. The 1,000-acre Whiteman ranch became the “Gray’s Creek Meadows” planned unit development, in which 40-acre lots were up for sale. One fine spring day in the late 90s, a large sign appeared down the road from us advertising the development & showing the numbered lot parcels. It was a sad day. Up till then, our little corner of the world had a sort of “splendid isolation” (to quote Warren Zevon, but in another context). There was very little traffic on the dirt road that ran past our property & practically no houses in view to the east.
This began to change. Soon cement trucks & pick-ups with metal toolboxes in the bed, & flatbeds carrying lumber & trusses began to roll down the road with regularity. We felt quite fortunate that the two 40 acre lots across the road from our house were bought by some good-hearted folk who were interested in doing some ranching. But other lots were built up, all further to the east, & a road was constructed for the sub-division. Of course, folks who bought their property in the spring, when Indian Valley is a verdant paradise, became quite confused by July or August, when the land reveals its desert soul, & it’s 105 degrees & no rain has fallen for a few months.
A resort started across the mountain from us in Donnelly; Tamarack Resort—it was going to be the next “big thing,” & transform the McCall-Donnelly-Cascade area into the new Sun Valley. Land prices went thru the roof in that area, & while Indian Valley never saw the completely insane parts of the boom, a lot of effects were felt here as well—most notably, Governor Dirk Kempthorne (later Secretary of the Interior under Bush Jr) decided there had to be a fast route for getting from Boise to Tamarack—coincidentally, Kempthorne was an investor in the resort. There’s been talk of a road going from Emmett, Idaho thru Indian Valley for about 70 years, & Kempthorne resurrected this plan. The Emmett-Indian Valley Road was going to be a four lane highway smack thru our sleepy little village (not to mention smack thru elk & antelope habitat); moreover, the County Commissioners told me that the road would be close enough to our house that Eberle & I could run a roadside attraction…. There was a wild speculation—all the lots in Gray’s Creek Meadows were bought (tho very few were built up) in anticipation of Indian Valley becoming a stop on the way to the “World Class Resort” at Tamarack. The road that would come roaring thru Indian Valley would connect to a road up over Council Mountain along the Mild Fork of the Weiser River. Since very few people reading this have ever seen the current Middle Fork Road—a winding mountain dirt road that frequently narrows to one-lane with a cliff rising to the north & a precipice down to the river on the South—I can only say that building such a road would have been a very expensive proposition. Then the bust came. Tamarack Resort is now bankrupt & closed & owned by a receiving company. Land values have fallen as precipitously as they rose. Any plans for the Emmett-Indian Valley road or the Middle Fork highway are completely moribund.
Obviously, the economic downturn has brought troubled times & an uncertain future to us all. It’s a cause for anxiety, & for many people, a source of real hardship. On the other hand, Indian Valley is once again sleepy—the meadowlarks & blackbirds are singing from the cottonwoods & aspens; the frogs are singing in the irrigation ditches. Somewhere south of the village in the empty rangelands, the antelope are grazing….
What does this have to do with our walk on Whiteman Lane?—nothing, or everything. It’s a quiet dirt road that lies between rolling pastureland, with the round mass of Sage Hill to the northeast & a view of the eastern mountains stretching beyond. The cows are nursing & tending this year’s calves—barely a month old. There’s practically no traffic on the road, & no houses on the section we walk, just a red barn.
Hope you enjoy the pictures, & please take a few minutes if you can spare ‘em to watch the slideshow. The background music to the slideshow is a piece called “Hatrack the Horse” that Eberle & I wrote for a theatrical production of Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories—Hatrack the Horse is a character in those tales. It’s really pretty much a jam with yours truly on tenor banjo & Eberle on marimba. The slideshow also has pictures of the little “dump” that lies on the western side of the road. This (thankfully) is no longer a dump, but is an almost archeological collection of items that must date back a good 50 years, & is I suspect, a remnant from the old ranch. Various items become unearthed there, & Eberle & I—both inveterate junk collectors—often come away with some little treasure—an interesting & smooth piece of old glass, a small unidentified metal device, etc.
(Pic Caption: An old fire truck for the Council Rural Fire Department, an all-volunteer force. )
Hey, we’re starting yet another series here on Robert Frost’s Banjo. In the better months of the years, Eberle & I love to go on weekend jaunts, & we thought it would be fun to combine these jaunts with photos & stories for the blog. The Fine Day Out series won’t necessarily be appearing at fixed intervals, but it should be appearing often over the next several months.
Of course, to say that the weather in our area right now falls under the aegis of “better weather” is just plain wrong. The winter has been hanging on longer than usual (tho one thing I’ve learned in 11 winters in Indian Valley—there is no “usual” winter here); the mud is often as prominent in the landscape as the snow by late February, & sometimes there’s much more newly bare ground than snow by this time of year. Not in 2009, however. A combination of big snowstorms in late December thru early January & consistently cold weather since has left us with several inches still on the ground except on the steepest south & east-facing slopes.
With this lingering winter, Eberle & I were both suffering a bit of cabin fever yesterday, & we decided we needed a bit of a jaunt, even if just a short one. So with camera in hand, we headed up U.S. Highway 95 to Council, the next town up the road, & the county seat of Adams County, Idaho. At a population of just over 800, Council is the “big town” in Adams County. It was founded in 1873 by the Moser family. The Moser raised cows & hogs, & sold meat & butter to the miners working in the nearby Seven Devils Mountain range. The town got its name because local Native American tribes—the Nez Perce, the Umatillas & the Shoshone—used the area as a meeting place.
(Pic caption: The historic Adams County Courthouse—this building is on the National Register of Historic Places, & a group of tireless volunteers are working to restore the building for use as a community center. The group has received grant money from HUD & from the Idaho Department of Commerce, & things are looking quite hopeful for this old building. The building once contained both the courthouse & the jail, as well as all the County offices. Eberle & I have been involved in a couple of performances in the old courtroom, one of which was a screening of Nell Shipman’s Back to God’s Country, with the two of us playing our score live. This was very well-attended & received.) Council is not an affluent town; it’s a place that has depended on various resource-based industries for an economy, & these industries have all pretty much “gone bust.” When the town was founded, its economy was based on the Seven Devils mining operations, but this industry died out many years ago. There was also the Pacific & Northern rail line (you can read more about the PIN line here), but that also has ceased operations; & the timber industry has seen a marked drop-off over the last 20-30 years. Council was especially hard-hit when Boise-Cascade closed its mill there in the 90s. (Pic caption: Sadly, a lot of businesses have closed on the main street.Buckshot Mary’s was a marvelous curiosity shop, but the store went out of business a few years back & has yet to find anyone to purchase the property.)
Eberle & I hope you enjoy this short tour of Council; we had a blast wandering around town (especially before the rather raw wind came up) & taking pictures. As the weather improves, our Fine Days Out will of course venture much further afield.
The Ace Saloon—one of the few businesses open on a Sunday afternoon. The Ace is a popular watering hole, & also a karaoke hotspot. The building also houses the Branding Iron steakhouse, & has apartments upstairs.
Another building for sale. Two good businesses tried their hand at making a go of it in this fine old building—a combination café/used bookstore (with quite a nice selection—also a piano & a guitar available for use) & a pizza restaurant that served pretty good pies with interesting ingredients. Even our Bay Area friends spoke highly of the pizzas here. Neither business could make a go of it in the long run, however, & this building also has been on the market for some time. The wonderful old Zenith sign at Sam’s TV & Electric.Sam's is a going concern, & has been a mainstay for years.
The vet’s office. Of course large animal vets are in demand in any ranching town (tho a lot of ranchers do a good bit of the veterinary work themselves). In our case, the vet is also the mayor of Council; in fact, he performed the marriage ceremony for Eberle & me right in our garden one fine September day.
The People’s Theater was the town movie house, but its doors have been closed for a number of years; at this point, it appears that the building can’t be salvaged—a shame, because the People’s Theater dates back to the silent movie era. The daughter of the local newspaper editor used to play piano for the silents when they played there.
A local outbuilding, in better repair than many, & more decorated than most.
An alleyway running behind the defunct pizza place, past Buckshot Mary’s, & finally into the parking lot of the local supermarket.
Up to now I’ve written about I’ve written about diners from a "mythic" past—partly remembered “fact” & partly remembered “fiction.” This month’s diner comes from the recent past, however—& probably also belongs to the future, unlike the Miss Bellows Falls or the Blue Moon, or certainly the defunct Ed’s Café. Which isn’t to say that its presence in the current flow of my life prevents it from commingling the real & the imaginary, even tho neither Eberle nor I had ever visited it until early in this quickly waning calendar year.
I’ve written previously about Winnemucca, an oddly stark oasis in Nevada’s high desert, about how I’ve passed thru Winnemucca at various existential crossroads. Eberle & I have passed thru Winnemucca together a number of times, too, on the way to visit dear friends in both the Bay Area & in SoCal, & all roads lead to Winnemucca—actually, the one road, US Highway 95, leads to Winnemucca, where it intersects with I-80, which then either leads back to the two-lane lonesomeness of US 95 south thru the salt flats north of Fallon, or on to the Sierras & the multi-lane mayhem of Sacramento & the Bay Area.
It seems that no matter when we leave Idaho, we need to eat when we reach Winnemucca: this can be anytime between early afternoon or my own “personal best” of about 9:15 a.m. But Winnemucca isn’t a Mecca for gourmands—it could actually seem to be a dilemma to chow down here before rolling across the stretches of tumbleweed & lethal hot springs & truck stop casinos to the west…. Fade to flashback….
It was a Sunday evening, early March this year. I was sitting in the music room, playing the guitar, not intently but in a slightly distracted fashion. There was a lot of free-floating anxiety—a long, & ultimately personal story, but a member of Eberle’s family was involved in a rather horrifying divorce, & there was serious speculation that Eberle might be subpoenaed as a witness for the “other” side—something she didn’t want to happen; her family urged her to sequester herself—the underlying motivations for their guidance were muddled, at least. She came into the music room & we talked—about 17 hours later we were in a fully loaded Subaru headed south on US 95, having dodged the subpoena we were sure would inevitably arrive in a Sheriff’s car just as we were loading the guitar or the last backpack….
With a mid afternoon start, we only made it to Jordan Valley, OR that day—having progressed from the mud & snow & cold of Indian Valley to the bare, frozen ground & snow patches & savage wind of the high Oregon desert at winter’s last hurrah; we stayed in a second floor room in the incongruously monikered Sahara Motel in a room with stunningly retro fixtures & a door held closed against the wind by a guitar case…a story in itself.
Next morning we were off southward, & we pulled into Winnemucca in the late morning, exhilarated by taking it on the lam to the Bay Area & discombobulated by the anxiety & strangeness of becoming sudden fugitives—& hungry & wondering if there was anywhere worth eating in this oasis of casinos & franchise motels. I caught sight of The Griddle’s sign, & thought it had a beckoning retro look…. The joint was bustling with a mixture of the late breakfast & early lunch crowds—we opted for the latter; Eberle ordering a salad, while I ordered chili. The place was trim; the light thru the windows was warm—Winnemucca’s 50 degrees felt balmy after Indian Valley & Jordan Valley. To our delight, Eberle’s salad actually contained real greens, & Romaine lettuce—this wasn’t the typical Iceberg salad of western diners; the chili was tasty & satisfying.
On our way back north & east after a week in Negri’s Motel in Occidental, CA—after wonderful lunches & breakfasts at Howard's & an amazing dinner at the Willow Room Market & Café in Graton & Glen Park jam sessions with burrito appetizers—we thought a lot about a mid afternoon lunch at The Griddle…only to pull into Winnemucca around 2:30 & find the place closed. We wound up at a mediocre Mexican joint & swore we’d never make that mistake again—The Griddle closes at 2:00 p.m.
Later that month we were on the road south once again, this time without the sheriff on our tail (so to speak), but rather to perform for a screening of Nell Shipman’s The Grub-Stake at Claremont-McKenna College in sunny SoCal in its late March pollen splendor—the performance courtesy of Claremont-McKenna’s droll film maven Jim Morrison & our all-time fave English Lit/Gender Studies prof & all-around good buddy Audrey Bilger. We stopped at The Griddle heading south & north this time…. don’t remember the menus that time around, tho one was a late breakfast that might have involved eggs on Eberle’s side & French Toast on mine—the place still trim, the booths still comfortable, the light still bright & blue & yellow thru the windows….
Early last month I made two stops at The Griddle on my way to & from Occidental to catch up with good pal Dani Leone & help her re-furnish her cottage in the Redwoods & reclaim our nightclubbing past in Baghdad by the Bay & generally talk each other thru our individual pasts & futures over a number of delightful meals. But on a sunny Friday morning I was at The Griddle before 9:30 a.m. having pulled out of Indian Valley about 4:00; the breakfast quesadilla was nothing to pen a postcard about, but it got me thru to the western Sierra foothills happily enough, & the giant orange squeezing machine behind the counter was cranking out glasses of fresh juice….
On the way home it was cloudy—cloudy in Winnemucca! The autumn was winding down; I made it to The Griddle with thirty minutes to spare & for a time suspected I was their last customer of the day, until the waitresses were chagrined to see three parties walk in around 1:50. I was happily sustained by the chicken pot pie you see in the pic below—a real chicken pot pie, with a real crust, not the pale imitations you find in the supermarket freezer section—all the comfort vegetables & the creamy gravy…. It was still six hours to home, but it’s the sort of food that will take you lots of miles down the road. Would I drive to Winnemucca with the sole intent of eating at The Griddle? No. But I’d be glad to see that sign appear again, because it’s a welcome stop on the way to places I love, places that are vivid in my imagination; it’s a comforting stop I’ve made during trips that accumulate mythic details as I move thru them again in memory….
The beginning of September is always a festive time around Robert Frost’s Banjo central—not only does my birthday fall then, but also our wedding anniversary. Since the actual date of both (the second) fell on a busy day in the middle of the week, Eberle & I decided to celebrate on Friday with a canoe trip up the North Fork of the Payette River.
Besides the beautiful scenery, there’s a lot of wildlife. While this section of the North Fork isn’t all that far from civilization, it’s not all that far from some serious back country either. Because of this, one animal that can be seen on this river is moose—an animal I’d never seen in the wild.
ry. We stopped paddling & started furiously taking pictures. The moose were quite placid; they finally got up & went into a grove to eat; when they disappeared into the trees we paddled around the point & found them on the other side—further away this time, but still in plain sight. They never seemed agitated by our attention—in fact on the other side of the point the cow moose was lying down quite peacefully, tho occasionally sniffing the air. The young moose continued to forage.
Two stumps with ears
A picture can’t really convey how massive these animals are
In profile—the young moose is almost the size of a horse!
It was amazing when they stood up—the cow moose’s body was like a draught horse in size, but with longer legs.
The young moose foraging around the point—you'll have to enlarge this & the next photo to see the moose.
The cow moose taking a rest
Up a lazy river?
A little more spectacular scenery
